


Oh What Brave New World (that has such people in it)

by theLiterator



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Arctic, Capsicle, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Interwar Period, Not Politically Correct, Polar Bears - Freeform, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Treasure Hunting, greenland, kid!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 23:04:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1938, Tony Stark at 12 is old enough to accompany his father on one of his expeditions to recover Captain America, lost in the Great War.</p><p>Of course, he wanders off as soon as he can, and of course, everything that can go wrong from there does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh What Brave New World (that has such people in it)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/gifts).



> THANK YOU TEABERRYBLUE!!! (Best beta ever, honestly, she made my dialogue amazing. Any remaining mistakes are, of course mine.)
> 
> Okay, I feel the need to explain my choice in having Tony call the native Greenlanders Eskimos, even though I imagine them as the Inughuit simply because of how far north I am picturing this story. Given the time period and Tony's education, I expect he would have thought of them as Eskimos, so that is the word I chose for him to use.

The sea was nothing but steely gray against a lighter gray sky, and Tony’s mittened hands kept slipping on the railing, but he stayed up in the ship’s prow, keeping his eyes forward.

The excitement of this adventure had hardly waned, despite the bitter, penetrating cold that only got worse as they went further north. It was kept alive by the stories the men told at night in the ship’s mess, especially from Jorgen Mortensen, whom everyone knew had been in all six of Knud Rasmussen’s expeditions and had the best stories.

Tony hardly knew who Knud Rasmussen was, but listening to old Jorgen was a lot better than getting yelled at by his dad and the ship’s captain for getting into the engines. He’d had some ideas about a hydraulic pump but he had barely had a chance to scribble them into his notebook before the bosun was dragging him back above.

He could hear men talking behind him a ways, military men, his father’s friends. They liked to pretend that they had some big, important secret, but Tony assumed that if it was that big, and that important, they wouldn’t hint so heavily at it.

He wasn’t all the way grown, yet, but he knew how to keep a secret, and it didn’t involve telling people he knew one.

And Tony did, in fact, know a secret. He knew why his dad had put together this expedition, even where no one else seemed to. It wasn’t about learning more about the Eskimos, like Jorgen thought, or about the Northwest Passage, like most of the crew seemed to think.

It was about something far more interesting and important than all of that.

Tony’s dad had helped the Allies in the war; everyone knew that much. But what only a select group knew was that he’d been a part of the project that used biologic methods combined with Röntgen radiation to create the very first super soldier. The military men on board the icebreaker were all aware of that.

This expedition was simply the most recent in a series spanning Tony’s whole life that were efforts to retrieve the lost wreckage of the Imperial German fighter plane and its astonishing technology.

The secret that only Tony knew, however, was that his dad expected to find the super soldier amid the wreckage.

“You’ll catch your death, child,” Jorgen said.

“I want to _see_ ,” Tony protested. Jorgen pulled a carton of salmiak from his pocket and shook two of the diamond shaped pieces into his gloved hand.

Tony pulled a face but obediently opened his mouth. Jorgen was utterly convinced the nasty salty candies prevented chest colds, and Tony hadn’t gotten one yet, so he wasn’t going to argue with the man.

Jorgen started telling him a new story, this one about having to battle one of the Narwhals of the extreme north, and ushered him back inside.

***

They made camp in a tiny bay where a group of Eskimos are milling around, staring at the ship and laughing into their mittens. Tony was glad he wasn’t the only one with sealskin mittens anymore, and he was perversely pleased that most of the Eskimos seem to be wearing them. His father had had them commissioned for Tony, but most of the other expedition members seemed to be using sheepskin instead of seal, and gloves instead of mittens.

No one was paying him any attention except the bosun, who was directly between Tony and the engine room, so Tony slipped over the side of the boat. Maybe the Eskimos had engines they needed fixing, or maybe they had stories like Jorgen. Either way, it beat enduring the stink-eye from the bosun for even a second longer.

He slipped through the bustle with practiced ease; he was used to the glamorous parties his mother liked to hold, even though she hadn’t had a very big one since he was small, so no one paid much attention to him as he darted past them.

There were other children in the village, but they all seemed to be darting around and causing as much of a ruckus as possible, so Tony avoided those for now. He made his way up to an older woman who seemed to be holding court with the other women, all of whom were listening raptly to her orders. Tony couldn't understand a single word of what she was saying, but he cocked his head and listened hard.

He shouldn't, he guessed, be surprised that they weren’t speaking English or even Danish (which he only understood shouted warnings in anyway) but he still was, and he strained his hearing to try and make out whatever she was saying.

Eventually, all the children burst into motion and fled, and the older woman pressed a bag into his hands and shooed him in their direction, so, with a backward glance at the ship and the engines he wasn’t allowed to touch, he followed.

The other children started playing a game of chase, but none of them seemed willing to tag Tony, which he was fine with. It gave him a chance to stand back and survey the landscape. It didn’t look any different than it had from the ship, except that he could see a weird scar where the glacier was _wrong_ , and he frowned.

He wasn’t a glacier expert or anything like that, and he wondered if he should go ask Jorgen, but a glance over his shoulder showed that in following the children he’d left the camp behind.

He shrugged and squared his shoulders. He was a Stark; he didn’t need Jorgen to tell him if that was a normal glacier. He would approach the question with rigorous scientific method and determine it for himself.

First, he caught up with the other children. They were playing in a weird flat spot in the snow, where it crusted hard only a few inches down, and white-clad foxes milled at the edges, eying everyone warily. 

“Hello!” he said as cheerfully as he could. “I was wondering what happened to that glacier?” He pointed and hoped he looked curious enough that _someone_ would understand.

He got his wish-- sort of. The other children started shaking their heads and making negative gestures, some of which seemed like the sort of superstitious warding his father frowned on, so he scoffed and shook his head back.

An older child, maybe almost a man himself, waded forward and seized Tony’s shoulder in a mittened hand. He shook his head urgently, and Tony frowned. He wasn't sure he particularly liked these Eskimos, and wondered why Jorgen had married three of them.

“Lemme go!” he snapped, twisting violently in the older boy’s grip, and the boy let him go and took a step back, hands held up placatingly.

He glared at him, and then at all of the other children, and thought “Starks have no use for cowards” and turned on his heel in the direction of the scraped-up glacier.

It was hard to tell time passing, and Tony hadn’t pocketed his watch, which was proving not to work especially well in the Arctic anyway. He wondered if it was the cold or the aurora, and thought of ways to fix it for both cases as he walked. The sun slowly whirled around, from to his left to behind him. Wind attacked him from all fronts, it seemed, and his eyes stung from the frozen tears it seemed to suck from him, and his cheeks felt hot like they’d been sunburnt. It hadn’t been nearly this cold on the ship-- or maybe he had been outside a long time.

He turned back to judge which way he had come, but he wasn’t leaving many footprints. He had fallen through a too-thin crust awhile ago, and since then he’d been sticking to the jutted up chunks of boulder that dotted the landscape, and tiptoeing across the snow where he couldn’t avoid walking on it.

Well, that couldn’t be good, except that if he could get up to higher ground, he’d be able to see the seashore and walk back that way. No problem!

The first time he stopped was when he saw the pawprint. He was pretty sure it was a dog print, because all the Eskimos used dogs, so that was a normal thing to find in the Arctic, except--

Except he remembered the story Jorgen had told about the wolves coming in hungry on a polar bear’s kill and killing the bear and eating both the bear and his seal. He had been shivering for awhile at this point, but _this_ shiver had meaning.

Dogs. Definitely dogs.

He was at least halfway to the glacier, he decided, which would be a great time for rest, so he plopped into the snow and worked himself low enough that the wind wasn’t so nasty.

He opened up the little pouch the woman had given him and saw that it was food, which made him realize how ravenous he was. He counted out chunks of jerky and allotted himself a third of what he had, and frowned at the other food. Well, looking at it now, he wasn't’ sure it _was_ food.

Little square chunks had been hashed out of something slightly sticky and overwhelmingly fishy to his tongue, but they clung valiantly to a thick chunk of something rubbery.

He’d only eat that if he was starving, he decided, and he wasn’t going to starve, because once he got up to that scraped out place, he was going to turn around and find the camp and the ship and the ship’s mess.

The sun hovered just behind him now, and he continued his ascent. He’d have thought the wind would be worse as he went higher, but it seemed like it was calming, or maybe it was just that there weren’t anymore eddying gusts sneaking up behind him to crawl under his parka.

He was still shivering every other breath, but the sun felt warmer when it was to his back, which was nice.

Finally he crested the edge of the glacier, and he stared at the weird ruts in the ice and he bent to pick up a tiny chunk of metal, no larger than his pinkie. He couldn’t tell what it was made of, but excitement welled under his skin and the shivers subsided.

This was what his dad was looking for!

He grinned brilliantly at the barren landscape and forgot his hunger and his shivering and he scampered down the crest until he was on solid ice and following a decades’ old trace.

It was slicker near the trace, which led him to believe that whatever had scraped everything up had been hot when it landed-- hot enough that over 20 years of wind and ice hadn’t been enough to wear it away completely; and he wondered how quickly whatever it was had hit the ice to go that deep and hot.

The scraps of metal got bigger as he followed the trail, until they were bigger than him, glinting sheet metal like God had broken a mirror scattered everywhere.

He tripped on one, and it cut through his iron pants and he could feel hot blood where it had sliced, but he ignored that, climbing to his feet to keep running.

He found the main part of the crash abruptly, and when he tried to stop his forward motion, he couldn’t. He careened into a torn open bulkhead and slammed to a stop against an ice-covered wall.

Everything was covered with a thick layer of ice, maybe an inch or two at it’s thickest, and it was wet and glistening with spring melt where the sun was shining directly on it, and Tony, daze already with the impact, was caught considering the ways the sun’s heat could be harnessed.

After a few moments, he looked over at the hole to the outside, and decided that since he was already here, he could explore a little. No one would know to scold him about it, at least, and he knew what his dad had whispered to the secret people about this broken husk, what _engines_ it might hold.

He wanted to see them first.

He ventured deeper into the thing, and was awed at its mass. He was pretty sure nothing this big was being flown by _any_ nation right now, and that made his hands itch to scribble notes.

He didn’t have any paper though, just two-thirds of a lunch and some weird gooey stuff, so he used his hands to balance and made his way across the slippery, foreign deck.

He knew he was getting somewhere, because he found _bodies_ , dead in pools of perfectly frozen blood, and they all looked like Krauts, not that he really knew what that meant. But this thing was supposed to have been a Kraut ship, and they definitely weren’t Americans laying in their own gore.

He had to fight with himself not to puke up his jerky, but he needed the energy and besides Starks had no use for cowards, so he pretended like looking at them didn’t twist him up inside and kept moving.

The engine room was huge. _Cavernous_. He stood several moments staring up in awe, and then he spotted a catwalk that led straight into the massive turbines. He laughed delightedly and found a good place to climb up, slipping and scrabbling to keep from falling and then, as soon as he’d pulled himself up on the catwalk, it started swaying.

He searched for, and found, a good handhold to keep inertia from dumping him back down again and breaking his leg, and he heard a loud, sharp _tang_ as something metallic wasn’t so lucky.

Ice cracked loudly, and Tony risked looking down. What he saw--

He had to scramble back down again, because that wasn’t any Kraut, lying there in ice shattered like glass.

He had to check, he had to--

Safe on solid decking, he reached a mittened hand, trembling with guilt and anticipation, and he flipped the man onto his back.

The effort cost him his footing, and a new chunk of metal won free of it’s icey mooring, dropping directly onto his skull.

***

There was soft breath ghosting warm across his cheek when he fought free of the blackness, and when his eyes burst open of their own accord, he realized he was being held, tightly, but his parka had been unfastened and there were arms snaked inside it with him.

He was pressed up tight against a chest clad in blue, and there were hard plates under his cheek. Everything seemed warmer, unnaturally so, and Tony wondered, fuzzily, who could have found him that was wearing such an odd shirt and no parka.

He realized, after a moment, that in the center of the chest was a single, white star, just as a cheerful, wry voice murmured, “Good morning,” and Tony gasped.

He drew away from the warmth long enough to look up, and up, and see the handsome, regular features and blond hair of the man he’d accidentally sent tumbling to the deck before he’d gotten knocked out.

“You’re _alive!_ And I dumped you on the floor! But I didn’t mean to, it’s just that everything is slippery and why are your arms in my jacket?” Tony said, everything pouring out of him willy nilly and without waiting for him to approve the words.

“You were chilled,” the man said. “I couldn’t let that stand. And you got me free of the ice, so I thought I’d… help.” Tony hadn’t been sure, before, but there was no mistaking that earnest grin, or the metal shield to their left, and he fought to keep himself from doing anything _more_ humiliating.

“Thank you,” Tony said in his most polite tones.

The grin slipped away like it hadn’t been. “Are you-- are you an American?” Captain America asked quietly, hopefully, and Tony couldn’t really think of a good way to answer that, so he just nodded vigorously.

That didn’t feel like enough though, not for _Captain America_ and the lonely expression painted across his features, so Tony blurted out an answer almost against his will. “Yes! And we’re looking for you! We have been for a long time. Well, not _me_ , we, but my Dad organizes these expeditions to look for you.”

“That’s kind of him,” Captain America said. “Did he send you in here to look for me?”

“No,” Tony said sheepishly, looking anywhere but at Captain America’s face. “That was an accident.”

“Well, I think it was a good accident,” Captain America told him firmly, and Tony hummed and nodded agreement, even though he didn’t really agree. He’d knocked Captain America down twenty feet and might have shattered him beyond recognition if it weren’t for pure blind luck, and Starks didn’t put all their money in lady luck’s bank.

Captain America’s stomach growled. Tony pulled away from him, and Captain America immediately started buttoning his coat for him, which was pretty convenient as it allowed him both hands free to pull out the food pouch. “Here,” he said. “I already had a third of the jerky, so we need to break it up into sixths, and then I can have one sixth and you can have five sixths, and then it’s even.”

“What?” Captain America said, and Tony shook his head.

“Never mind, I’ll divide it, and--”

“We should split it in half,” Captain America said. “I wasn’t awake when you ate yours before, so it’s still fair.”

Tony shook his head. “There isn’t much.”

Captain America smiled a radiant, warming smile, and said, “That’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Later, Tony would point to that second as the exact moment when he fell head over heels in love with Captain America. He even sort of understood why his dad had to do this every summer, leaving Tony and his mother behind in the muggy New York heat.

Now though, now Captain America was inspecting the weird sticky fishy stuff.

"What is this?"

Tony shrugged. "I think it's for eating. Tastes bad, but that doesn't matter, if we get hungry enough."

"You think?" Captain America asked bemusedly. Tony made a face. He’d forgotten his hypotheses didn’t carry as much weight as his dad’s again. It didn’t really matter though; he had no idea if it was food.

Tony shrugged harder. "I don't speak Eskimo, so I couldn't exactly ask."

Captain America’s face contorted into a strange expression at that, sort of amusement mixed with disbelief. He’d had adults find him amusing, and adults not believe him, but very rarely both at once, and very rarely so openly. He decided he liked that.

"Son, I have to know: does anyone know where you are?" It was clear Captain America was trying to sound authoritative, but it was just as clear that he realized he wasn’t succeeding. Tony decided to take pity on him and answer him honestly.

"Maybe? The other boys all watched me leave."

"Did any adults watch you leave?" The stern tone had slipped, and been replaced by grim determination. Captain America reached out to squeeze Tony’s shoulder, and Tony slid away from the touch with the ease of long practice. Captain America didn’t press the issue, simply let his hand drop back to his side.

It was better for conserving heat anyway.

"I'm sorry, okay!" Tony burst out. "I didn't think I'd really find anything, and then I did, and now we're stuck and there's not enough food and there's no fire, and I'm _really_ sorry, okay?"

Captain America swept him into a hug, and his skin was warm against Tony's cheek, and Tony wondered how much energy he had to be expending to maintain that body heat given the external temperature.

"You're going to starve to death a lot faster than me," Tony said matter-of-factly before he remembered he wasn't supposed to talk like that in front of strangers. He gasped and covered his mouth, too late.

Captain America smiled and shook his head. "Neither of us is going to starve; you'll just have to navigate us back to your dad."

"He's going to be angry," Tony said in a small voice-- he hadn't meant to say that either.

"Not if I tell him what a good little soldier you've been," Captain America said. "Here, eat your jerky. We've got to move out-- we're burning daylight."

Tony rolled his eyes. "No we aren't; it's too far north for the sun to set. I thought you were the smartest _and_ the strongest and the best."

"Nah," Captain America said. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

Tony wrinkled his nose. "You probably don't want to go back there. We have a house on Long Island; you can come stay there." Brooklyn was a bad place; his mother was always saying so, in hushed tones as she gossiped with the other ladies in Great Neck . Jarvis was nicer about such things, but even he said Tony wasn’t to go there without him or his father. The people there were hungrier than his neighbors and his mom’s friends.

"I'm sure I'll manage."

"You won't," Tony said, "There's more work now, Jarvis says, but it isn't all great, and even mom and me get hungry sometimes, just because there's no food to _buy_."

"Tell you what," Captain America said. "You tell me your name and I'll think about talking to your parents about visiting you on Long Island."

"I'm Tony Stark," Tony said, offering a mittened hand to shake.

"Tony Stark? So your dad is... Howard?" Captain America was staring at him, and he looked the sort of disgusted-impressed that his dad’s friends always looked when his dad was showing off something he’d fixed or improved or built. Tony usually liked that reaction, but he was finding he really, really didn’t from Captain America.

"Yeah, I said he was looking for you." Tony muttered defensively.

"No, I know, I remember, just... What year is it?" Captain America smiled falsely at Tony.

Tony frowned. "I... You won't like to hear it."

"But it's better to hear it from a friend than a stranger, " Captain America said.

"Are we friends? Because I don't even know your name." Tony glanced down to stare at the silvery fur of his mittens for a moment.

"Your dad didn't tell you?" Captain America asked quietly.

"He knows how to keep secrets," Tony said, shrugging.

"Steve. Steven Rogers." The name was delivered solemnly, and Tony had to look back over at him. Captain Steve was staring at his bare fingers as if they held all the answers, and Tony didn’t like the calculations going through his mind about the heat transference from skin to air, the joules of energy required to produce the heat being transferred.

The food Captain Steve would need to eat to replenish that energy.

Tony stood up decisively. Or he tried--something was wrong with his leg, and it hurt badly enough to send him toppling back to the decking.

"Tony, Tony!" Captain Steve cried urgently, and Tony looked up at him.

Finally, he remembered what Captain Steve had wanted, so he said "1938. It's 1938. You've been frozen solid for 21 years."

"You're bleeding through the bandaging." Captain Steve lurched forward and pressed both hands to the wound. Tony shied away slightly from the pressure, but it didn’t matter.

"It's because blood is too warm to freeze as it comes out," Tony said dully. "Where did I get bandages?"

"Even Kaiser Wilhelm cares enough about his men to stock their infirmaries," Captain Steve said.

Oh.

"Okay," Tony said. "I'm ready, we can leave now."

Captain Steve bit his lip, looking torn, but he had to know as well as Tony that they'd definitely die if they stayed here.

Going back was infinitely worse than coming out. The sun was directly opposite where it had been when Tony had left the ship, and Tony couldn't even make it out of the debris field before he was on his knees trying not to puke from pain. The ice felt grand against his leg, but the chill of it seeped into his mittens and he knew it was doing far more harm than good.

Captain Steve ended up hoisting Tony up on his back under the shield, which made everything feel warmer, no more wind at his back, Steve's human warmth at his front, and Tony wriggled his buttons back open so he could share the warmth back.

Once they were down from the wall of ice at the glacier's edge, Captain Steve's progress slowed drastically. Twice he stopped and ate some of the sticky stuff, and the second time he forced Tony to take a chunk of it. It was cold and tasted rotting, but he chewed it up until it dissolved on his tongue and he could swallow it.

When they got back within sight of the flat space where there had been those white foxes, where the other children had run and run and played their games without him, Captain Steve stopped. "Are you... Would they have left without you?"

There were no foxes or children now. The whole of the space was eerily quiet, but it wasn’t any different from any other part of their walk; Tony supposed it was because he’d been hoping someone would be looking for him, and someone would be waiting for him at the last place he’d been, like Jarvis when he went to one of his dad’s talks.

"No!" Tony said, probably too loudly given he was shouting in Captain Steve's ear. "They're only a little further, maybe ten minutes. The ship can't go any further north anyway, so it will still be here."

"Okay, well..." 

The bear came out of nowhere. Captain Steve grabbed his shield from behind Tony, and Tony bit back a scream. The bear swiped and got Steve across the chest, raking great bloody gashes through his Captain armor, but Steve was ready for the second attack, the shield coming up to block one-handed.

Tony tried to get down, but Captain Steve's other arm was like steel holding him in place. "Let me go you bastard!" he snapped. "You can't fight one handed!"

"Can!" Captain Steve gritted out, and to Tony's fascination and surprise, he proceeded to bash the bear with the shield and send it reeling back.

The bear didn't seem to want prey that could fight back, because he made only one more half-hearted lunge for them, but Steve's shield was more than a match for it, and it loped away then.

"Ouch," Captain Steve said.

Tony pulled himself higher on Captain Steve's back so he could peer down at the wounds. He whistled, even though it was rude.

"You need bandaging," Tony said sagely, trying to adopt Jarvis's tones.

"You said ten minutes?" Captain Steve asked. He sounded exhausted, and Tony nodded against his cheek.

“I can walk,” he said, trying to decide if that was true or not.

“So can I,” Captain Steve said through clenched teeth, and Tony was tired and woozy and didn’t have the desire to argue.

It was probably closer to half an hour by the time they finally made it back to the harbor. The ship bobbing lazily in among the chunks of iceberg a more than welcome sight to Tony’s eyes.

The bosun spotted them first, and shouted something that Tony couldn’t hear clearly enough to make out. Men poured from the ship, Jorgen at the forefront with his dad not far behind.

His dad froze a few paces away, but Jorgen continued on to sweep him from Captain Steve’s shoulders and fuss over him. Tony tried to brush him off, because he was _fine_ , but Captain Steve had turned to recount the litany of Tony’s injuries.

“I’m fine!” he said, and then his dad was there, scowling darkly.

“Do you have _any_ idea how much you have delayed this expedition?” he demanded, and Tony shrunk under his fury. “The _cost_ of sending out men with sleds to go find you? Your mother said you weren’t ready for this, and I should have listened to her.”

“Sir--” Captain Steve said.

“Sorry,” Tony whispered.

“Jorgen, take him back to the ship. I’ll deal with him later.”

“Sir… Howard,” Captain Steve said, and his dad turned to look at him with no little shock on his face.

“What-- how? How!?” Howard said. “You-- this can’t be true. It’s the cold. I’m hallucinating.”

“No,” Captain Steve said with a twisty little smile. “It’s me; it’s really me. This is your boy?”

His dad nodded, and then glanced down at Tony, eyes wide and surprised. Not pleased, never pleased, but the surprise was a nice change, and he’d take it.

“Yes, Tony. My son. But-- how?” Tony had never seen his dad look like that before. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but he was also woozy and his leg hurt.

“He got me free. Saved my life. A chip off the old block, certainly,” Captain Steve said, leaning forward to ruffle Tony’s hair. Howard knocked Captain Steve’s hand loose when he went in for the hug, but Tony couldn’t really blame him.

This had been the most important thing for his dad for years and years, since Tony could remember, and Starks were made of stern stuff anyway.

Tony let Jorgen usher him away then. His dad would convince Captain Steve to come stay in the house on Long Island with them, and there wouldn’t be any more summer expeditions, and everything would be fine now, so it was okay if he had to go wait on the ship.

Besides, his leg was really hurting.


End file.
